THE STUDY OF GREEK AND LATIN
LITERATURE IS PECULIARLY USEFUL
IN DEMOCRATIC COMMUNITIES

What was called the People in the most democratic republics of antiquity
was very unlike what we designate by that term. In Athens all the citizens
took part in public affairs; but there were only twenty thousand citizens
to more than three hundred and fifty thousand inhabitants. All the rest
were slaves, and discharged the greater part of those duties which belong
at the present day to the lower or even to the middle classes. Athens,
then, with her universal suffrage, was, after all, merely an aristocratic
republic, in which all the nobles had an equal right to the government.

The struggle between the patricians and plebeians of Rome must be considered
in the same light: it was simply an internal feud between the elder and
younger branches of the same family. All belonged to the aristocracy and
all had the aristocratic spirit.

It is to be remarked, moreover, that, among the ancients books were
always scarce and dear, and that very great difficulties impeded their
publication and circulation. These circumstances concentrated literary
tastes and habits among a small number of men, who formed a small literary
aristocracy out of the choicer spirits of the great political aristocracy.
Accordingly, nothing goes to prove that literature was ever treated as
a trade among the Greeks and Romans.

These communities, which were not only aristocracies, but very polished
and free nations, of course imparted to their literary productions the
special defects and merits that characterize the literature of aristocratic
times. And indeed a very superficial survey of the works of ancient authors
will suffice to convince us that if those writers were sometimes deficient
in variety and fertility in their subjects, or in boldness, vivacity, and
power of generalization in their thoughts, they always displayed exquisite
care and skill in their details. Nothing in their works seems to be done
hastily or at random; every line is written for the eye of the connoisseur
and is shaped after some conception of ideal beauty. No literature places
those fine qualities in which the writers of democracies are naturally
deficient in bolder relief than that of the ancients; no literature, therefore,
ought to be more studied in democratic times. This study is better suited
than any other to combat the literary defects inherent in those times;
as for their natural literary qualities, these will spring up of their
own accord without its being necessary to learn to acquire them.

It is important that this point should be clearly understood. A particular
study may be useful to the literature of a people without being appropriate
to its social and political wants. If men were to persist in teaching nothing
but the literature of the dead languages in a community where everyone
is habitually led to make vehement exertions to augment or to maintain
his fortune, the result would be a very polished, but a very dangerous
set of citizens. For as their social and political condition would give
them every day a sense of wants, which their education would never teach
them to supply, they would perturb the state, in the name of the Greeks
and Romans, instead of enriching it by their productive industry.

It is evident that in democratic communities the interest of individuals
as well as the security of the commonwealth demands that the education
of the greater number should be scientific, commercial, and industrial
rather than literary. Greek and Latin should not be taught in all the schools;
but it is important that those who, by their natural disposition or their
fortune, are destined to cultivate letters or prepared to relish them should
find schools where a complete knowledge of ancient literature may be acquired
and where the true scholar may be formed. A few excellent universities
would do more towards the attainment of this object than a multitude of
bad grammar-schools, where superfluous matters, badly learned, stand in
the way of sound instruction in necessary studies.

All who aspire to literary excellence in democratic nations ought frequently
to refresh themselves at the springs of ancient literature; there is no
more wholesome medicine for the mind. Not that I hold the literary productions
of the ancients to be irreproachable, but I think that they have some special
merits, admirably calculated to counterbalance our peculiar defects. They
are a prop on the side on which we are in most danger of falling.